With its dusty colonial decor and tourist-friendly location in the heart of Lima, just off Plaza de Armas, Hotel Maury may seem like an unlikely window to the Peruvian capital’s dapper past.
Yet, from the 1920s through the 1950s, bars like this one, and at the Gran Hotel Bolívar down the street, drove the city to the forefront of global mixology; crafting concoctions like the El Capitán (a pisco take on the Manhattan) and earning a cult following from big-name drinkers like Ernest Hemmingway, Orson Welles and John Wayne.
For high proof, just read the second volume of The South American’s Gentleman’s Companion, a 1951 “exotic drinking” book by the mid-20th-century cocktail critic and mixologist Charles H. Baker Jr. “More and more we are coming to rank Lima as one of the first civilized cities in this, or any other hemisphere; for it has great tradition, a great culture, a great plan of education, and the purest-spoken Castilian Spanish in this Western world,” Baker Jr. wrote. Most notably, he noted, the Lima Country Club’s Champagne Padre, a bubbly cocktail with yellow Chartreuse and Cognac, is “a truly stately drink that rates attention in any society.”
Today, at the Maury, you can still order a drink from Eloy Cuadros, the legendary face behind the bar for over 60 years credited with transforming the pisco sour to Peru’s flagship cocktail by adding egg-white foam, gum syrup and Angostura bitters. At the age of 81, Cuadros is a living link to Lima’s old-town glamor; one that until recently appeared to have faded away for good, as the commercial and tourist-friendly heart of the city shifted south to coastal neighborhoods, like San Isidro and Miraflores, and tastes drifted to beer and wine.
A Bar Crawl With Legs
These days, however, Lima’s cocktail scene is one big post-pandemic happy hour. When the city fully reopened in October of last year, new local spirits and over a dozen high-profile bar openings brought a fresh look and feel to the art of a stiff drink.
You can take a sip of the new classics at Ribeyro, an intimate cocktail spot tucked inside a bed and breakfast in Miraflores, which opened last year. “What I'm trying to do is something relaxed, disruptive, and fresh,” said Luis Flores, who runs the bar alongside chef Pedro Miguel Schiaffino.
Ribeyro often feels more like a mixologist laboratory than your standard Peruvian pub. Most nights, Flores quizzes patrons on their palate and then whips up on-the-spot libations accordingly. Adding a Latin American spirit, such as an Andean potato vodka or Argentinean vermouth, to a martini here; tossing in an unusual native ingredient like cacao mucilage to a Benedictine cocktail there.
“In contrast to what was thought to be the idea of a bar in Lima in the past, we wanted to make it more accessible and closer to the Peruvian public,” Flores said.
